Posted August 18th, 2007 at 9:10 am
By this point, we know all about the
partisan, political briefings the White House conducted in government buildings for government employees, despite clear prohibitions by the Hatch Act. The defense from the Bush gang is that the briefings had nothing to do with political corruption; they were just informal meetings about key congressional races for the Republican Party, intended as “
team building” and “morale boosting” exercises.
To hear the White House tell it, administration officials who received the briefings were never encouraged to do anything with the information; Rove & Co. just wanted officials at agencies — ranging from HHS to the State Department to NASA — to be aware of vulnerable Republican and Democratic incumbents. It was an extravagant “FYI,” intended to improve bureaucrats’ self-esteem.
The reality, of course, is that these briefings were part of a legally-dubious scheme that not only violated the Hatch Act, but also led to
fairly obvious abuse of federal tax dollars.
Top Commerce and Treasury Departments officials appeared with Republican candidates and doled out millions in federal money in battleground congressional districts and states after receiving White House political briefings detailing GOP election strategy.
Political appointees in the Treasury Department received at least 10 political briefings from July 2001 to August 2006, officials familiar with the meetings said. Their counterparts at the Commerce Department received at least four briefings — all in the election years of 2002, 2004 and 2006. <…>
During the briefings at Treasury and Commerce, then-Bush administration political director Ken Mehlman and other White House aides detailed competitive congressional districts, battleground election states and key media markets and outlined GOP strategy for getting out the vote.
Commerce and Treasury political appointees later made numerous public appearances and grant announcements that often correlated with GOP interests, according to a review of the events by McClatchy Newspapers. The pattern raises the possibility that the events were arranged with the White House’s political guidance in mind.
Ya think?
It all ties into the Bush gang’s Kremlin-like abuses — using the power of the state as a tool of the ruling party.
In this case, Rove’s office effectively blurred the lines between the RNC and the executive branch of government. Our tax dollars and public agencies were little more than campaign resources for Republicans.
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